A Fragile Peace

by A Fragile Peace (retail) (epub)

  Allie stood up.‘Perhaps I’d better…?’

  ‘Nonsense, dear. The all-clear hasn’t gone yet. Not that they bothered us with the warning, mind you. You’d think the blessed Jerries were invisible, wouldn’t you? Anyway, Charlie’s gone to make the tea. Stay and have a cup.’

  ‘Well – thank you – I’d like that.’

  For a moment she watched Rose’s flying fingers, white in the gloom against the inevitable khaki wool. ‘You’re very clever to knit like that. And in the dark too. I never seem to have found the knack.’

  ‘Why, bless you, it’s easy as pie.’ Rose held up the sleeve she was knitting for inspection. It looked long enough, Allie thought, to serve as a windsock. ‘For our Alf. Stan’s dad. Lost everything in France, he did.’

  ‘Dunkirk?’

  The older woman nodded.

  ‘Was he hurt?’

  ‘No, thank God.’ Rose flashed a quick smile. ‘Just mad as a hornet. I wouldn’t like to be the first Jerry our Alf lays his hands on.’

  ‘A friend of mine was killed in the evacuation,’ Allie found herself saying.

  Rose moved her head and tutted sympathetically. Her needles clicked.

  Outside, distantly, there came again the noise of a plane’s engine, the faint crackle of gunfire, like the sound of flame.

  ‘We were lucky we didn’t lose all of them,’ said Rose, after a moment.

  ‘That’s true.’ Ray Cheshire had been one of the unlucky ones. He had died in an air attack before the boats had come. The news had saddened and badly shaken Allie, for all that she had not seen Ray since long before the war. His death had somehow seemed to cast a shadow on all those she knew, all those she loved.

  The two women sat in thoughtful silence. A solitary bird sang in the garden. Then there came again an all-too-familiar sound. Stan appeared in the doorway and launched himself expertly onto the top bunk without touching the floor. His eyes were lanterns of excitement. ‘Jerries!’ he said. ‘Dorniers. Thousands of them!’

  Charlie manoeuvred his way carefully through the awkward, sandbagged doorway and handed down a tray of tea to Allie. ‘Here they come again,’ he said cheerfully.

  * * *

  That was the beginning. In common with most others who saw it in the shambles that followed that raid, Allie did not believe that Hawkinge could possibly be operational again in a month of long Sundays. But it was, and in twelve hours. Men toiled through the night by the light of the burning buildings to fill the craters and level off the ground, and – as from every other battered airfield in the south-east – when the sun rose, Hawkinge’s fighters were already taking off again. Amid ruined barracks, hangars, workshops and stores, men and women worked cheerfully on, and a WVS canteen doled out tea and breakfast to all comers. It was a scene often to be repeated in the next few weeks as the Luftwaffe hammered the Fighter Command stations mercilessly, in patterned attacks, in attacks of overwhelming force, in single, hit-and-run dive-bombing missions.

  But they by no means had it all their own way. The squadrons of Spitfires and Hurricanes were the chastening gauntlet that the enemy attackers had to run, and just punishment was exacted. Young pilots lifted their battered planes to meet the challenge again and again, landed them with body-fabric streaming like summer bunting, wingtips gone, tailpieces lost, undercarriages locked or shot away, and were back in the air in a matter of minutes in a patched-up machine they had never laid eyes on before. During those last days of August the sky was never free of combat, of smoke smudges, of dogfights and the faint rip of gunfire. The well-tended fields of the ‘garden of England’ were littered with the detritus of war, becoming a giant graveyard for twisted, fire-blackened lumps of metal that bore no resemblance to the marvellous machines they had been a short time before. A stricken fighter would sometimes drop out of the air like a stone and bury itself and its pilot in a self-dug grave twenty feet deep. Then again, a pilotless plane might circle and threaten in the sky for endless minutes, lifting and dipping in its last, unguided flight before sliding to earth in an eruption of flame. But down below, obstinately, life went on. Children going to school would stand and watch the battles in the sky, howling spite and fury at a victorious Messerschmitt, screaming with delight at a Spitfire’s victory roll, and always ready, with glee, to collect souvenirs – the more gruesome the better.

  During the first week in September the anti-aircraft guns – known universally as the ‘ack-ack’ guns – were kept busy constantly as the pressure upon the airfields and their defenders mounted. Yet, life retained a kind of defiant gaiety, rooted in an absolute refusal to let Jerry have it all his own way. It was in just such a mood that Allie and Sue decided to picnic on the downs on a bright Saturday afternoon, the seventh of September.

  There had been a particularly punishing attack on the airfield that morning – in fact, Hawkinge had been hit two or three times a day every day that week. This time, not only had the landing field been badly cratered again, but extensive damage had also been done to buildings, including the station headquarters: yet almost before the sound of the enemy engines had died, the repair work was once more under way. In this raid, the village, too, had been hit and several civilians killed. After she had come off duty that afternoon Allie had paid a call on the Jessups with whom she had become very friendly, and, delighted at finding them unharmed, she had found herself pressed into accepting a small pot of honey – a great prize in these days of constant shortages.

  ‘Good Gordon Bennett!’ Sue had almost drooled over the sticky pot. ‘What are we goin’ to do with it? It looks too good to eat.’

  Allie smiled at, but did not comment upon, the pronoun. ‘We could invite someone to tea?’

  Sue pulled a face. ‘The vicar’s otherwise engaged, love. An’ the King an’ Queen came last week. I know – a picnic! It’s been bloody years since I’ve been on a picnic!’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘When else is there?’

  ‘I thought you might be seeing Jan this afternoon?’

  Sue turned away, ducking her head. ‘No.’

  Jan Lenska, a Polish pilot with 79 Squadron, had pursued Sue with graceful singlemindedness from the first moment his dark eyes had lit upon her picturesque halo of hair and her forget-me-not eyes. They had both enjoyed the chase to the full, and it had been watched with good-humoured interest by half the personnel of the station.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Allie softly after a moment.

  Sue shrugged. ‘He took on one too many this morning. It was bound to happen. You know what they’re all like, the Poles. Got their own private crusade going. He got himself shot up and bailed out down the coast a way.’ Her voice was very nearly expressionless.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  The fair head lifted and shook. ‘Burned. They wouldn’t tell me how badly. But no one’s gettin’ to see him.’

  For the space of a couple of heartbeats, there was silence as the eyes of the two girls met and all the ghosts of the past few months rose between them in bleak recollection of pain.

  ‘Right,’ Sue said briskly, ‘that’s settled. A picnic it is.’ From the heights behind the airfield on a day such as this, it was possible to look out across the Channel a couple of miles away to occupied France. The girls strolled through narrow lanes between hedgerows in which dog rose and wild hops scrambled, and then up onto the more exposed downland where plump sheep cropped contentedly. An occasional engine-sound, while not interrupting their idle talk, sometimes caused them to lift their eyes warily to the skies. They stopped once to lean on a field gate and watch, below, a battle-damaged Spitfire land on the patched and uneven field, its engine sputtering painfully, its tail almost shot away. The little plane pancaked down onto the chequered, chalky ground in a cloud of white dust, slewed sideways and slithered to an awkward stop. Moments later a jaunty hand waved from the cockpit and a figure, doll-sized from where they watched, scrambled onto the tilted wing and jumped to safety. It was not until that moment that Allie realized
she had been holding her breath.

  Farther up the lane, a farm cart drawn by a magnificently handsome giant of a carthorse ambled up behind them. They stepped aside to let it pass, smiling at the tin-hatted ancient who held the reins. The old man eyed with appreciation the two trim figures in Air Force blue. ‘Goin’ far, ladies?’

  ‘Just to the top.’

  ‘Do with a lift, could you?’

  They hopped onto the tailgate of the cart as it passed and sat, feet swinging, as they climbed, slower than they could have walked, towards the summit. In the sunny distance the Channel glittered like a pirate’s hoard of diamonds.

  Allie, looking down at her dusty, swinging feet, laughed suddenly.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I was just remembering: I always swore that I’d never wear another pair of “sensible shoes” as long as I lived once I left school.’ She stuck her feet out, comically, in front of her. ‘Now look at me!’

  Sue grinned. ‘Think yourself lucky. I never had a pair of “sensible shoes” until I joined this lot!’ The words were genuinely humorous, and did not carry the faintest trace of resentment or self-pity. Allie glanced, quickly and curiously, at the pretty profile of her companion. In a company composed almost entirely of upper- and middle-class young women whose backgrounds, like Allie’s, owed much to money and to unheeded privilege, Sue Miller was the odd one out. She had lived all her life in Bethnal Green where her parents still lived, and had no pretensions to gentility whatsoever – would indeed hoot with laughter if anyone tried to credit her with any. ‘Come to that,’ she added now, tilting her head and watching the melodic rise of a lark, ‘I only went to school one week in two when I was a nipper. Always seemed to be something more interesting to do. Me poor old mum was always copping it from the school board man.’

  Allie laughed. ‘You aren’t serious?’

  ‘Straight up. If it hadn’t been for Miss Amelia Bertrand, bless her little cotton socks, I’d have finished up just another ignorant, runny-nosed kid scrapin’ the back streets of Bethnal Green. As it was…’ this time her tone changed just a little; there was in it the faintest, amused note of irony ‘…if it hadn’t been for dear old Adolf, I suppose I’d have finished up a well-read, runny-nosed kid scrapin’ the streets of Bethnal Green.’

  ‘Who was Amelia Bertrand?’

  ‘Teacher. Funny old codger. Took a likin’ to me for some reason.’ She chuckled, rolling her eyes. ‘She was the only one who did. And I can’t say I blame them when I come to think of it. I was a little bugger. But Miss Bertrand took me in hand. Gawd knows why. Showed me a few things I hadn’t noticed before. Got me readin’ poetry an’ the like.’ She threw back her head and crowed. ‘What a laugh! Me mum thought I’d gone doo-lally…’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Sue screwed a graphic finger into her forehead. ‘Crackers.’

  ‘Ah. And was it from Miss Bertrand that you learned your German? It’s much better than mine.’

  Sue took her hat off, shook her sweat-damp curls and tilted her face, like a flower, to the sun. ‘Oh, no. That was kind of an accident. Miss B got me a job – sort of assistant to an assistant nanny to a German family livin’ in London. I picked up the lingo off the kids.’

  Allie surveyed her in astonishment. ‘Just like that?’

  Her companion lifted one shoulder in a self-deprecating gesture. ‘More or less. They were a lazy little pair of blighters and wouldn’t learn a word of English. It was the only way I could get them to behave themselves.’

  ‘Did you never want to take your formal education any further?’ Allie was truly curious.

  Sue sent her an affectionate glance. ‘Allie, love, I didn’t have any formal education. Like I said.’

  ‘But – I thought everyone—’ Allie stopped, suddenly embarrassed.

  ‘Where you come from, love,’ said Sue easily, ‘but not where I come from.’ She glanced mischievously at Allie’s rather pink face. ‘It’s OK. Don’t worry about it. It isn’t your fault. I did all right with Miss Bertrand.’

  ‘But, that isn’t the point, is it? I mean – there must have been others who didn’t?’

  ‘True enough.’

  ‘And it doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Not a bit. Why should it?’ Sue swung her legs for a moment, thoughtfully. ‘Miss B wanted me to go in for a scholarship or some such thing – but I ask you, what good would it have done me? Can you imagine me at a posh school like the one I bet you went to? I’d have fitted like a foot into a glove. There’s no magic wands in Bethnal Green – and precious few anywhere else.’

  ‘You fit in here.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s different, isn’t it? I’m not a scruffy, know-nothing kid without a decent pair of shoes now. I’m old enough and ugly enough to look after meself. I’d say I’m doing better than most, in fact – have you heard me complainin’ about the outside loo? What you’ve never had you don’t miss. An’ as for fittin’ in…’ She glanced again at Allie. ‘You don’t have to be charitable. Don’t think I don’t know that there’s one or two think I ought to be scrubbin’ the floor rather than messin’ in with them.’

  Allie did not reply.

  Sue grinned. ‘Like I said – don’t worry about it. It isn’t your fault.’

  They rode in silence for a moment. Allie was thoughtful. Something in the way Sue spoke had reminded her of someone; suddenly she saw in her mind’s eye Tom Robinson’s light, disinterested eyes, heard his distinctive, accented voice. ‘My brother was at Cambridge with someone rather like you,’ she found herself saying.

  Sue was relaxing, eyes shut, in the sunshine. ‘Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.’

  ‘No, honestly. I think he must have got a scholarship from a grammar school or something. I – actually, I never asked.’

  Sue turned her head, lifted wry eyebrows. ‘Sounds like a clever lad. Was he happy?’

  Allie hesitated, taken by surprise. ‘I – don’t know.’ Then she added, honestly, ‘I suspect not, thinking about it.’ Such a thing had never occurred to her before. The mere thought of Tom Robinson stirred that faint, uncomfortable feeling of dislike that he always inspired in her. She did not want to believe that it stemmed from the difference in their backgrounds; even less did she want to suspect that it had its roots in his unhappiness.

  Sue turned her face back to the sun. ‘There you are then. It’s like I said – it doesn’t work. A place for everyone an’ everyone in their place—’

  ‘You don’t believe that!’ Allie was shocked.

  The graceless merriment in the pretty face proclaimed clearly that she did not. ‘’Course I do.’

  ‘But Sue—’

  ‘Gawd, girl,’ Sue said with friendly acrimony, ‘do belt up. Don’t you know when you’re gettin’ your leg pulled?’

  The cart tilted and turned, embarking on the final pull to the crest of the hill. Beneath them the village looked like a tumbled collection of toy houses, spilled and left by a careless child. The scar where the bomb had struck that morning stood raw against the green of growing things. The camouflage-colours of the aerodrome buildings, too, were fresh-flawed and gashed. In a field behind the village a game of cricket was in progress, the white-clad figures standing out in sharp relief against the sun-baked playing field. Allie smiled. The village team was captained by Charlie Jessup, who took the responsibility very seriously and had through the last few long summer evenings vigorously trained his stalwart men, the oldest of whom was seventy if a day, and the youngest his own grandson Stan whose enthusiastic knowledge of the game had been culled entirely from a hero-worship of Len Hutton and an assiduously collected set of cigarette cards. That the ‘Hawkinge Flyers’ – their scratch-team opponents from the airfield – numbered in their company a Leicestershire county player and an Oxford Blue worried Charlie not at all.

  As the cart rumbled over the top of the downs, the two girls jumped from it, calling their thanks, and clambered over a stile into a field of short, springy grass.
A couple of plump sheep skittered stupidly away from them and then turned back to their ceaseless cropping. Sue spread the blanket that she had been carrying on the grass and they sat down, their backs to a stone wall, looking over the green hilltops to the Channel and to France. In that warm, peaceful moment, with the loudest sounds being the wind, which even on the stillest of days blew across these uplands, and the steady, tearing, crunching sound of the cropping sheep, death and destruction and the fear of invasion seemed the fantasies of a demented mind.

  ‘Doesn’t seem possible, does it?’

  Allie did not have to ask Sue to clarify the words. ‘No.’

  They sat in silence. A wren trilled. ‘D’you think they’ll come?’

  Allie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so, sooner or later. Have a sandwich.’

  The peace of the afternoon held. The girls lay in the sweet-smelling grass, talking desultorily, watching the small downland butterflies as they flitted in the hot sun, their fragile wings gold-dusted. They were packing up the few remains of their picnic when Sue lifted her head suddenly, listening. ‘What’s that?’

  Allie had been miles away; again and again during the pleasant afternoon she had found herself remembering the picnic above the Medway with Peter, that impossibly distant summer before the war. Last summer. It might have been a hundred years ago. She wondered if he ever remembered it, wherever he was. They had corresponded irregularly for the first few months of the war, but they had soon lost touch and now she had no idea where he might be.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Ssh. Listen.’

  Now Allie heard it – or rather felt it – too. A vibration in the air. Distant. Threatening.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Sue very softly. She was standing, her eyes shaded, looking out to sea towards the coast of France. Allie followed her gaze. In the distance, the shimmer of the sunlit waters was challenged by a harsher glitter in the air: the flash of light on perspex windshields. Bombers. Hundreds of them, high and darkly purposeful, spreading as the girls watched into a vast armada that filled the sky with their throbbing power – and around them the cloud of smaller, swifter fighters, shepherding their charges.